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Thirty years ago, today, MTV, formerly “Music Television,” got its start. That it’s still around, after 30 years of debasing American culture and pushing the envelope every possible way, isn’t cause for celebration. It’s sad. For three decades, this cable network has been one of the most powerful forces in dumbing down and destroying American culture and American kids.

I have pretty much the same views I shared on this site on MTV’s 25th and 20th birthdays. But things have gotten worse . . . far worse. After all, in the last five years, this cable network o’ crap brought us the glorification of teen single moms, who’ve made big bucks and become celebrities from the show. Way to discourage teen sex and kids out of wedlock, MTV. And the network brought us Snooki, the Situation, and company–a bunch of morons and worthless nothings who also made millions and achieved fame from “gym, tan, and laundry.”

MTV didn’t do anything for America but take it down a notch. And foster a gnat-like attention span for the masses who grew up as the “MTV generation.” If you are Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, you are thankful for the one-sided campaign efforts MTV and its “Choose or Lose” BS gave you. Al Gore, too, even though he lost. And if you are one of the many sleazy, less-talented, made-for-video stars who were creations of the network when it still played music, such as U2 and Madonna, then you are thankful for MTV, which made you millions and in many cases, set you for life (the members of A-Ha! and Loverboy, notwithstanding). (Real talents, like Michael Jackson, would have been huge stars, regardless of MTV. The “Thriller” video is one of the few worthy things I got out of MTV.)

And if you now look like a washed-up 40-year-old cocktail waittress, you are happy that MTV encouraged you, Britney Spears, to make out with Madonna and Christina Aguilera in the interests of good taste and making your bank account plentiful. If you like to wear meat dresses and shoe sculptures best suited for zero gravity situations, then you are happy this cable wasteland is still around.

But for the rest of us, it wasn’t that “Video Killed the Radio Star,” as the title of MTV’s first ever video airing by The Buggles would have you believe.

It’s that MTV killed America. Sluts and sleaze continue to be celebrated, in ever more outrageous forms thanks to this plague on the airwaves. As I noted on MTV’s 20th, even some of the original VJs wouldn’t let their kids watch.

And for good reason. I don’t wish MTV another 30 years. And thankfully–due to the internet–it and the rest of TV are losing customers by the droves. MTV may be around in another 30 years. But it’s already a sagging brand.

And I haven’t even mentioned MTV’s many other political and didactic groupthink BS programs, like its incessant pimping of Muslims as moderates and its preaching to us about hate crimes (which apparently had no effect on Muslims who watched), or its embrace of the unfortunately successful motor voter bill drive, making it easier for illegal aliens to register to vote and cast a ballot. MTV’s presence on TV in Muslim countries around the world didn’t make those kids moderate, as the U.S. government, which helped fund these efforts under President Bush, believed. In fact, it just encouraged supporters of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and HAMAS to sharpen their rap and hip-hop skills for recruitment videos. “YO! Hezbollah Raps!”

I can’t wait until MTV’s death, but its irreversible damage to America, and later around the world, cannot be reclaimed.

30 years later, and I still don’t “want my MTV.” You can have it. And take Snooki and the Teen Moms with you.

How sad it is when the “good old days” were “Beavis and Butthead” and “Yo! MTV Raps.”

53 Responses

I have blocked access to MTV for my children, as it usually filled with R-rated videos and other junk. Of course, I am a hypocrite for letting my teenage daughter attend a Britney Spears concert recently (attended by a large number of gay men).

Why is it still being called “MTV”, which stands for “Music Television”? Rarely do they feature any music videos, and when they do, it’s usually garbage!

I enjoyed the early days of MTV when they actually showed music videos continuously. As cheesy as many of those old videos now look, they were still fun to watch. But when things like “The Real World” and a bunch of other garbage started taking over time slots around 1990, it went downhill fast!

SOMEWHAT OF A COUNTERPOINT – When I was a kid, I was exposed to Scopitone, a jukebox-like contraption that played musical shorts. Back then, I wished there was a tv station that would present music that way.

Fast-forward 10 years: I joined the Naval Reserve and I heard about MTV’s launch. Back then I had my healthy fill of “Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special” and “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert”. Even back then there were many promo videos going around – remember Olivia Newton John’s “Physical”? The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”? Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” before it got overplayed to Hell? Back then, it was a dream come true, except that I was living in Canada, and thus I had to wait 4 years before we came up with MuchMusic, “The Nation’s Music Station”.

I have no problems saying that MTV, in its most basic form, had taken all these forms of music and made it available for public consumption. What were small bands with a small but loyal local following became jet-setting behemoths due to an expanded fan-base (more fans = more $$$). People started to care more about their looks and health – okay, at least “looks”. It did, at the height of the Reagan Camelot years, push its own “Say No to Drugs” campaign using actual using musicians.

But enough of this. There is only one thing that I can agree with DS, and that is the fact that MTV is now just creating pr0n. And it’s of the lamest quality, sanitized enough to pass FCC viewing standards.

If I wanted to see teen moms going wild or sex obsessed parents going wild, I would know where to get it, and it wouldn’t be from MTV.

Please don’t think that A-Ha has not had a successful career. Perhaps they aren’t as big as U2 or other groups in the US, but they have done very well over their 30 years they’ve been together. Their last show performing together in the US was in Los Angeles this past spring. Hate to seem them split up. They’ve had great solo careers/projects beside doing A-Ha and will continue to follow them.

As for MTV, their programming has gotten worse since its beginnings. It hasn’t been much better with Viacom’s other channels: Comedy Central, etc. Too bad many Americans allowed Viacom’s programming to live rent-free in their heads and lives, creating brains equivalent to inner city housing projects.

MTV is crap anyway. Nothing to show your children. TMF is bad aswell. TV-series such as Skins are really wrong and perverted and can lead to nothing good. It’s no longer “just music”. And the music is mostly just background music to half-naked women dancing around. Such a great example for the young people watching it! 😛

The creation of MTV was beginning of the end for me. I was a working/self-supporting musician back then. When I saw the non-stop videos I was almost as irritated as I was disgusted. Twas then I cut my hair, sold my equipment and got a real job. In my early 20’s I knew how my parents must have felt when they first saw The Beatles. It happened to me again with RAP years later.

I have never owned a subscription to any cable channel. Anecdote: In the mid 90s, I was at a party. There was a television on in one room of the house, showing a Beavis & Butthead cartoon. I had heard a lot about them, but had never actually seen them up until then. So for about 20 minutes, I sat there and viewed this Beavis & Butthead episode, in an effort to not look completely clueless when discussing then current pop culture around the water cooler. To this day, those are the only 20 minutes of MTV I have ever seen.

As for “Snooki” and “Teen Moms,” I would not be aware of either of them at all if it weren’t for Jimmy Kimmel’s monologues.

As for you, Debbie, I will always be baffled by this weird obsession with Michael Jackson. Just as you view Angelina Jolie as being Jon Voight’s wayward daughter, I mainly think of Michael Jackson as being Elvis Presley’s psychologically challenged ex-son in law.

It is small reason (and especially for the reasons Debbie gave) why the phonetic spelling of “MTV” should be considered as “Empty-Vee.” Because that’s what the core of most of its programming is: Empty. Except for the corruption of moral values and the political correctness they espouse.

P.S. MTV, though fostering a “gnat-like attention span for the masses,” was hardly the only culprit in this regard. “Sesame Street,” in its early years, was likewise guilty of shortening kids’ attention spans; in fact, it is said that the “MTV Generation” was preceded by the ” ‘Sesame Street’ Generation.” And Debbie’s views on that colossal failure in educating our kids have also been documented.

Actually, MTV during the Eighties and early Nineties was mainly about videos — and quality stuff. Its two-hour Sunday night show, “120 Minutes,” in fact, was one of the best music programs ever on television, fully living up to its “Alternative” moniker. It was only afterward that the network deteriorated, as CEO Tom Freston and other executives felt pressured to reach out to the tastes of teenyboppers and blacks.

As for moralistic parents and preachers who think they are “protecting” children from MTV by banning it from their homes or communities, they’re living in a fantasy world. Kids will find a way to have fun just as adults do. I just wish the fun these days was more about Killing Joke and R.E.M. and less about Busta Rhymes and “Jersey Shore.”

As much as I loved MTV in it’s advent, I hafta agree with DS. It’s tragic and she is correct.

I loved MTV in 1981. I can still hear my dad yelling “I’m gonna call up cable and get MTV removed”! I love to see all the first videos they used to show (nostalgic) and it introduced me to some great artists I may have never loved (Adam Ant, Lene Lovich, Dave Edmunds, The Stray Cats).

But even though I took the good of it, MTV ran with the bad. I was Liberal, but perhaps in my heart I have always been a Conservative because as a teen I hated to see filth on the channel. I even agreed (and prolly still do) with the PMRC. (Even though they high-lighted groups no one heard of like “The Mentors”).

I censored myself. I loved hard-core punk but hated filth like Madonna and Prince. Team up MTV and Madonna and there you have our culture rot. I always hated her because I could see she was mean and selfish. It always bothered me that others did not want to see that. Americans seem to like those who don’t deserve to be liked.

Anyway, today on Yahoo they are posting a story on bastard-factory Fantasia Barrino’s (a VH-1 show) 2nd out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Yay. She’s such a role model./

It’s all filth and if you haven’t noticed, kids today can’t even act like normal humans because they are over-sheltered, over-sexed and have no idea what manners and values and ethics are.

It’s disgusting. MTV could have been cool but decided to chase the filth.

Yes I agree with you Debbie MTV has become an abomination over the past 10 years or so. So who do we blame. Lets see who runs MTV. The President of MTV entertainment is Doug Herzog. The president of music and films is Van Toffler. And MTV is part of Viacom which is run by Sumner Redstone (Chairman) and Philippe Dauman (CEO).
It must be a coincidence that all these characters are tribe members just like you Debbie. They are the ones to blame. But you don’t like to expose ashkenazi criminality. Only goyim criminality especially if it involves an Arab with a Muslim name.
And just for the record even though homosexuals only account for 1.9% of the US population, 42% of MTVs original content is about the lives of homosexuals.

Somehow I doubt that those four are practicing, religious Jews. They are hardly adherents to Judaism, so religion has nothing to do with it. The lack of religion does.

I’m an orthodox Catholic, and there is a huge number of liberal “Catholics”/CINOs causing problems for American society.

However, Islam seems to be the only religion where the more religious the adherent is, the more dangerous and violent and backward they are. So Judaism and Christianity are not the problems, but Islam is.

Debbie-
I couldn’t have said it better. ..And MTV has been a pain in the ass to real musicians as well, especially those who visually do not match current trends or are “too much about the music”. In the 80’s it was just an advertising medium. Period. Now its a sewer.
To Jim Foster: FYI, Much of the time when Debbie exposes someone, its a fellow tribe member….so go crawl back in your hole.

I for one loved watching Beavis and Buthead and am excited that they are coming back in October. That show was pure genius and has been copied by South Park as a political satire show. Beavis and Butthead have a lot of new material to say “that sucks”.

It used to crack me up (huh-huh huh-huh, I said “crack”) that MTV had that vapid, stupid-assed show the Real World. All the idiots on that show played themselves up as being so hip, cool, diverse and multi-cultural when MTV’s most popular program was Beavis & Butthead.

MTV is the chief reason I think the Parent’s TV Council wants to have channel choice for cable subscribers. I would block all the “music” channels VH-1 (A carbon copy of MTV), BET, one of the many Obama channels, and the various subchannels (VH-1 Classic, BET Jazz, MTV2, etc). BTB, I saw Beavis and Butthead once, huh-huh-huh-IT SUCKED!

The Cable choice proposal which none of the cable companies will adopt (COWARDS) would give consumers greater choice in what they want. You pay for the channels you want not have a bunch of channels, many objectionable in content mixed in.

Of course…THERE’S ALWAYS THE ROOFTOP ANTENNA HOOKED IN TO GET DIGITAL OTA (Over The Air) SIGNALS.

And if I had my way a lot of these Illuminati signals would be replaced by a color bar test pattern and that goes for the “news” channels as well.

You are absolutely correct about installing an antenna. That’s what I have, and you would not believe how much harder it is to find one or anyone to install it these days. Thankfully I know how to do that stuff myself.

I am “weird” because I don’t have cable. But there is nothing to watch – we all saw Debbie’s post about the History channel, which is identical to the three or four other channels most people I know say are the ones they watch on cable.

The only thing I miss on cable is being able to watch my favorite baseball team, who aren’t broadcast in my area. Since I am within MLB’s imaginary “broadcast territory” for said team, I can’t watch them over the internet or any kind of satellite package anyway (thanks again, Bud Selig). So I built an AM antenna and listen to the superior broadcasters there and keep up with it that way.

Furthermore, how many people do you know that are 100% happy or don’t have some kind of issue with their TV provider? That would be zero point zero. Except for people like me, who don’t have an issue because we’re not paying somebody for it.

The only reason to have cable is if you live in the middle of nowhere. Otherwise, most people can pick up anywhere from 4-10 channels easily.

“And if I had my way a lot of these Illuminati signals would be replaced by a color bar test pattern and that goes for the ‘news’ channels as well.” – Bob Porrazzo

Actually, I preferred the old-style circular test patterns (whether the NBC or CBS designs) with horizontal and vertical resolution wedges and greyscale bullseyes – but those too would be preferential to the garbage which pollutes much of TV and cable (ESPECIALLY [e]M[p]T[y]V).

I grew up watching MTV when the music video was just getting popularin the early 80’s. During the early 90’s, I really like the 120 Minutes, Liquid TV, and HeadBangers Ball. However, they had crappy shows like that British Julie Brown who called herself Downtown Julie Brown. Once I saw The Real World began to be shown more and more and Liquid TV was removed and 120 Minutes destroyed, I turned it off. I really only hear what other people say about these toilet drain pipe of shows that are now on MTV. I would not even watch them and I am no prude. I think in another decade, MTV will go by the wayside like the daytime soap operas. Too bad MTV went from ok to the gutter in less than a generation.

thank you Debbie for putting into words what I have been thinking & saying to anyone who would listen to me, for years. I remember when I first saw MTV in a motel room on a business trip back in the early days all I could like, BORING. It’s still just as boring, not to mention disgusting.

Was it only I who noticed the glaring phallic symbol in the MTV logo? MTV encouraged misogyny and pumped up the vile treatment of women in videos. I’ve been complaining about it since MTV was new and now it has brainwashed a generation. I always thought MTV meant Men TV. I have paid for my opinion in crank calls from drunken men who love to treat women as scum.

and the kicker, its owned and controlled by a jew and you dont mention it. he’s as much of a traitor as obama and should be denounced by other jews as much as muslims should denounce hamas. a pox on both their houses. whats that? crickets?

MTV has always been predominately garbage. As such, parents are
more to blame for not redirecting their kids from it, not the obvious miscreants and no-talents who are part of the production. At least as insidious, and perhaps more so, are shows like Leno, who makes sure he caps his now sub par hour with whatever nonsense “music” group that likely couldn’t get a gig at the local beer bar; or Dr. Phil, who wastes air time on any misguided nincompoop he can build his sideshow around. Speaking of the good doc; I wonder how much more effective his hour might be if he had guests on who actually knew how to conduct their lives…Wouldn’t sell, would it? And that should be one very disturbing thought.

“MTV has done more to destroy music than anything else in my life time.MTV is to music, as KFC is to chicken” – Lewis Black

From Day 1, MTV has always been vile. Even in their “good” old days, the sleaze and controversy was always there,specifically in the videos – too sleazy,too misogynistic( As the Heavy Metal vids were ) ,nowhere near enough Black artists to please Black racists (like Rick James on “Nightline”,sleaaaazy,coked up,misogynist,megalomaniacal hypocrite)and White-Guilt music critics,etc,etc. In retrospect,most of the criticisms were RIGHT,as we see with the state of music today.

Why did I fall for it? I was in my teens and 20’s,and thought I had to to be cool.

MTV may not be what it was 20, even 15 years ago, but “filthy” it is not. It is benign. If you don’t like the network, there is a simple solution: the remote control changer.

As for Brent Bozell pushing his ridiculous a la carte cable programming gambit, let’s hope it never sees the light of day. Aside from lousy economics, it’s a product of a fevered mind. Bozell is a creepy anti-pornography censor (of course, we can’t use that awful word “censor”), America’s equivalent of the UK’s late Mary Whitehouse and her war against the BBC.

MTV was always trash. The only folks who deny it are those who dislike black trash but like white trash, and have this attitude for reasons too obvious to be stated. Not only did MTV reflect rock and roll culture (which was by nature rebellious, counterculture, “sex, drugs and rock and roll” with more of the former two than the latter) but they did their best to push the envelope even within that context. From the devil-worshiping music, the bands that attacked all forms of authority, the punk rock bands with their radical politics, to the artists who attacked and trashed mainstream culture, MTV embraced and promoted it all. It isn’t as if there weren’t respectable (by comparison) people making quality music. MTV just had no interest in them. (Or they exiled them to VH1).

And no, MTV didn’t cease showing rock videos because of multiculturalism, political correctness, to appease blacks (who were never a big part of their demographic anyway). Look, it took a threatened boycott by CBS Records, Michael Jackson’s label, to get MTV to show black artists at all, and when they did, FOR YEARS it was only Michael Jackson. Then it was ONLY Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Prince and MC Hammer. Ugh …

No, what happened was rock music sales began to slide. Then the “alternative music” fad blew up. So in response to the slide in rock music and the boom of alternative music, record companies abandoned signing and developing rock acts in favor of alternative acts. And when the alternative fad ended … the labels wound up with neither alternative or rock acts. The only thing that was left was R&B and rap, which is what MTV began to show constantly. Viewers left in droves, so that was when MTV resorted to the non-music programming. That is what happened, people.

But even when MTV’s programming lineup looked like the Republican National Convention (to quote the loathsome leftist Bryant Gumbel’s idiotic statement on the Winter Olympics) it was still trash. Period.

All hysteria, signifying nothing, Gerald. “Devil-worshipping” rock bands — what a hoot!! Even Mrs. Grundy-style critics of Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne eventually had to recant on that one. And alternative music is hardly a “fad,” save for those who equate wishful thinking with reality. And, by the way, since when has MTV pushed drugs of any sort, save for maybe legalization of marijuana — something National Review, to its credit, did 15 years ago. You sound like Robert Bork on steroids, mate.

I watched MTV during its Golden Age fairly regularly, though not addictively. I don’t watch too much anymore, but it’s less out of moral offense than its change in programming to suit the tastes of a teen demographic.

I was a teenage fan of both Ozzy and Black Sabbath and they did encourage doing drugs, worshipping the devil, etc. Look at all your old album covers. Ozzy bit the head of a bird and a bat. AC/DC sang about the highway to hell and the killing of a wife by a hitman among other things. They were all pretty damn destructive and in hindsight as an adult, I’d hope my son wouldn’t listen to that crap. I barely do anymore.

I agree that MTV is crap, but it has plenty of company. We have to disagree on media “poisoning the minds of our youth,” even though that has been a constant refrain since virtually the beginning of civilization.

Moreover, each generation is appalled by what is current, maintaining that what they had as kids was wonderful, wholesome, etc.

The fact is that all pop media, always has been mostly garbage. God gives us a brain to figure this all out, and there is no point in blaming slackers, juvenile delinquents, (blamed on comic books in the early 1960s) or anything else on the media.

I have altogether stopped listening to US Music or US Radio for that matter. I find popular USA music to be lacking in melody and harmony … USA music doesn’t sound like music anymore. I’m Sorry I listen to Brazilian, Japanese and Korean music now and the more I do … the more I realize how light years behind the USA is now when it comes to non-rhythm based music. Goodluck anyways you guys were once very good in the Music field.

Plenty of good US music is not on conventional radio, and can be found on such places as siriusxm online, Pandora, or Radioio.
Not sure what you mean by “non-rhythm based music,” as this by definition is not possible.

As soon as you have one tone following another, there is a rhythm. Perhaps you mean music without a danceable beat.

So … Marilyn Manson isn’t a devil worshiper? Why don’t you go tell him that. He certainly THINKS that he is. And by the way … the best expose’ on devil worship among those rock bands wasn’t done by some conservative religious type, but by GERALDO RIVERA. Look, dude. Defending those guys because you used to listen to it and fit its demographic is the equivalent of defending Barack Hussein Obama because you are black (or defending George W. Bush because you are a white Texas Republican).

I am a progressive liberal,but I must agree that MTV is a horrible influence on kids today.I can’t believe such trash as”Teen Mom”and “Dating Naked”is even permitted to be aired on TV!I’m not a fan of Fox News either,but at least they’re only trying to present their political views,not purposely trying to present sleaze and stupidity as entertainment for our kids.